NMR-spectroscopic characterization of phosphodiester bond cleavage catalyzed by the minimal hammerhead ribozyme.
|Title||NMR-spectroscopic characterization of phosphodiester bond cleavage catalyzed by the minimal hammerhead ribozyme.|
|Publication Type||Journal Article|
|Year of Publication||2008|
|Authors||Fürtig B, Richter C, Schell P, Wenter P, Pitsch S, Schwalbe H|
In order to relate the conformational dynamics of the hammerhead ribozyme to its biological function the cleavage reaction catalyzed by the hammerhead ribozyme was monitored by time-resolved nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. For this purpose, the two nucleosides around the scissile phosphodiester bond were selectively (13)C labelled in multi-step organic syntheses starting from uniformly (13)C-labelled glucose. The phosphoamidites were incorporated using phosphoamidite chemistry in the hammerhead substrate strand. In addition, the 2'-OH group on the 5'-side of the hammerhead substrate strand was labelled with a photolabile protecting group. This labelling strategy enabled a detailed characterisation of the nucleotides around the scissile phosphodiester bond in the ground state conformation of the hammerhead ribozyme in the absence and presence of Mg(2+) ions as well as of the product state. Photochemical induction of the reaction in situ was further characterized by time-resolved NMR spectroscopy. The detailed structural and dynamic investigations revealed that the conformation of the hammerhead ribozyme is significantly affected by addition of Mg(2+) leading to an ensemble of conformations where dynamic transitions between energetically similar conformations occur on the ms-timescale in the presence of Mg(2+). The dynamic transitions are localized around the catalytic core. Cleavage from this ensemble cannot be described by mono-exponential kinetics but follows bi-exponential kinetics. A model is described to take into account these experimental data.